Thursday, 7 June 2012

Film Review: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

Here’s yet another film attempting to win an audience by ‘going dark and gritty’ and hoping some decent visuals to use in the trailer will convince the audience it’s worth two hours of their time. I can tell you for a fact it is not worth my, your, or anyone’s time; it is the worst film I have seen all year.

This latest version of the Snow White story attempts to make us believe she is a brooding, strong leader of men and is ‘the chosen one’ to defeat the Wicked Witch with an army on horseback and... it’s such utter trash I won’t put you through the pain of knowing more about the ‘story’. The film, like so many since Christopher Nolan found success with reinventing the Batman franchise, is dimly lit and the colour pallet is grey, black, brown, and dark green which, according to the film makers, is tough, daring, and original. No, it’s bland, boring, and instantly forgettable.

Kristen Stewart displays the acting range of a cardboard cutout and is believable in not one frame of this tragically over long disaster’s 127 minutes. Next to her is Chris Hemsworth whom, while not quite a cardboard cutout, has the onscreen charisma of a crash test dummy; they make for the most lifeless and dull onscreen pairing you could ever wish for.

As sorry as you can feel for someone who picked up multimillions for acting in such tripe, Charlize Theron gets my sympathy. She is clearly trying her damndest to make her Wicked Witch a memorable screen villain and I won’t fault her over-the-top performance but the dialogue she is given must have been written with magnets on a fridge for it inconceivably bad. She’s reduced to nothing more than a narrative tool to blurt out nothing but narrative exposition because there is no other way to keep the scenes moving from one to the next.

Are there any positive to this film? The CGI is mostly excellent and the set design is also very atmospheric at times but this is the bare minimum you expect from a budget of $175m. Yet is there a point in CGI and nicely created sets when the reason they even exist is to bring to life such a head achingly bad story and script? The answer, as always, is NO.

Stop thinking for yourself verdict: At a time when bad films are being released seemingly every week, Snow White and the Huntsman stands out like a beacon of all that’s wrong with modern cinema.